The Combine was utilizing and recycling existent human materials and buildings instead of adding their own technology to them. It was also more faithful to Viktor Antonov's early concept art and work on the game. It was, therefore, a much more dystopian, Orwellian universe (even though the final product is still quite Orwellian) with touches of cyberpunk/steampunk style, in the vein of the book/film 1984 or other films such as Dark City, Blade Runner, City of Lost Children, and Avalon. It was more faithful to the concept art seen in Raising the Bar: darker, gothic, sinister, rainy, foggy, gritty, with a lot of brick, metal, and glass, getting along well with the cut concept of the Combine replacing the air with poisonous gas and draining the oceans. At this point, City 17 was an American East Coast-like city based on Washington, D.C., with many large skyscrapers, and had a very basic, blocky FPS design. While the playable game leaked in 2003 is quite similar to the retail product and already heavily trimmed, this earlier period of development of the game shows a quite different style. The Citadel also looked very different, it was more round than the bulky Citadel from the final version.Д¬oncept art for the early City 17, with what appears to be the inner wall on the right. Originally, Eli and Alyx Vance had no relation, and Eli's lab was located in a cave in a scrapyard and was much rougher than the better-equipped laboratory within a hydroelectric power station in the retail version (the scrapyard area where the Gravity Gun tutorial takes place, being an auxiliary area as opposed to the bulk of the lab, is reminiscent of the original concept). Parts of the book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar and the leaked files detail how Gordon would fight alongside characters such as Odell in the Borealis (or Hyperborea), as well as fighting together with Captain Vance and Vance's forces, the Conscripts, in the Air Exchange, the Weather Control and the rooftops of City 17. Several City 17 levels at the start of the game and complete chapters from the second half of the game were completely removed and sometimes re-introduced in the subsequent Half-Life 2 episodes.

Half-Life 2 was also originally intended to be much more diverse in settings, and the original journey was extremely long (to the extent that the game felt almost overblown, with little time being spent on developing existing characters one of the key reasons for it being cut).

Half-Life 2 was originally intended to be a far darker game based on far grittier artwork where the Combine were more obviously draining the oceans for minerals and replacing the atmosphere with noxious, murky gases. The book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar and the numerous leaked files revealed many of the game's original settings and actions that were either cut down or removed entirely from the final game.

Main article: Half-Life 2 original storyline While ' Half-Life 2 Beta' is often used for convenience, it is somewhat incorrect, since the leak files cover several stages of the game's development, spanning over years, and since no information about their different development stages is known except the engine build number.

9.2 E3 demonstrations cut from the final gameДЄll names for the cut/leaked material were coined by the players.

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